stock market

Becoming wealthy is not easy. It takes hard work, a sound strategy, and continued perseverance.  Moreover, becoming wealthy means taking action versus looking for good things to happen to you or looking elsewhere for opportunity. While there are a number of reasons or challenges to individuals becoming wealthy, in this post, I’m going to walk [...]

We all know (or should know) that having an emergency fund is a good thing, and I think most people would agree that the best place to keep your emergency fund is in a high yield savings account or a short-term CD. However, I try not to keep a lot of money in my emergency [...]

As a CPA, I’ve done several tax returns over the years. One thing I got to see when calculating capital gains and losses was what type of investments people were into. I saw a lot of portfolios made up of 5 to 10 single stocks. It shocked me that so many people were putting a [...]

With such a wide variety of investment products available, it can be confusing to know what exactly to invest in — even with easy-to-manage investments like mutual funds.  Investors have a huge range of styles — from conservative to aggressive, and everything in between.  Of course when trying to pick mutual funds, an investor wants [...]

Financial security is a common pursuit.  Whether you’re just starting out in the working world or you’re looking to retire, financial security or the pursuit of financial security is of large importance for you.  Unfortunately, a generation of Americans have been led to believe that the contributing factors to financial security come from anywhere but [...]

Since exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were launched more than a decade ago, the trend in investing has been towards low-cost investing. People are shunning investments which charge an arm and a leg to do something many people feel they could do more easily and cost-effectively. This is the result of increased competition in the investment world [...]

To the average person, forex, otherwise known as foreign exchange or simply FX, is one of most enigmatic trading markets in the world. Seemingly contained among the elite banks of the world, why would an average person ever want to venture into the Forex market? Image via Wikimedia Commons Forex Market First, we will explore [...]

The following is a list of top discount brokers focused on cheap online stock trading for active traders. It is sorted from the lowest commission cost to the highest. Recommended brokers are selected based on users’ votes and reviews. In addition, special offers and features for these discount brokers are listed to help you decide. [...]

I was recently looking at some stats regarding the US Market (Wilshire 5000 Total Return index).  As of February 28, 2010, over the last 10 years the market return was 0.1%. Hmmm. That’s not very high. That means for the last ten years, if you invested in the Wilshire 5000 you would have almost nothing [...]

I believe that cash flow is one of the most powerful concepts in personal finance. People tends to know how they feel about their personal finance — e.g., whether they are comfortable or are struggling. Unfortunately, not too many people truly understand cash flow and how important it is to your finances. When you understand [...]